But the one I will give an Evans-Manning award to is the one from Nate, which rings of G.K. Chesterton (“What is wrong with the world? I am.”) and Wendell Berry:

I am a reason for America’s decline.

I moved away from a beautiful town in the middle country for the temptations of the big city and a dream of bigger and better things.

My beautiful town is slowly losing both its identity and livability, and much of that has to do with people like me leaving it.

What has happened to my town has happened to a thousand towns.

In my small town, I had more reasonable expectations for what constituted a comfortable life. I could live more sustainably, in that I didn’t need to drive so much, or at all. I ate fresh vegetables from gardens and meat from local farmers.

Now I live in the big, romantic city. My food comes from thousands of miles away. God knows where my meat comes from. People drive into my city from surrounding burbs, spending two hours each way. Next year we will start a billion dollar highway improvement system that will save commuters six minutes on average.

@Sam M: I think the problem is that it’s not enough for just one person, or a few, to go back to their small towns. It’s not the same unless a lot of people do it. Which leads to the question of why everyone leaves in the first place.

But some of it has to do with social persecution. If you’re not the right sexual orientation, or race, or neuro-typicality, you might feel very alienated and on the “outs” in a lot of Flyover America. Hence the migration to more tolerant (but alienating in other ways) big cities.

I totally agree that the commuting thing is not sustainable…and that will be changing in the future. But should all the people in the cities move out the country side…like 200 million of them? I guess the country side and small towns would not be that any more. Maybe you just wish they were all dead. Maybe you should focus on population issues.

Personally, I’m much happier living in the Big City than the smaller city in the Midwest where I grew up. That town was a dreary place, and, rather than being in decline, it seems to be doing fine without me.

I think this highlights the problem in trying to discern whether America is in decline.

Certainly, small-town, rooted, traditional values America is in decline. But there’s another America which is on the rise. The cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, urbanized and suburbanized, well-traveled, non-traditional values America is on the rise. It all depends on what horse one has attached one’s wagon too. America itself? I’d say, generally on the rise, as most of America has chosen the cosmopolitan, new values horse. But it’s understandable enough to say that the others would feel that “America” is on the decline, because their horse is getting old and weak.

This is romanticism, pure and simple. By almost any measure, it is better to live in an urban area than in a small town or rural setting.

Nate says he doesn’t know his neighbors, but what magic is going to occur to make him more friendly in a small town? He says he could live more sustainably in a small town, but most of those town’s residents depend not on local farmers (who probably have sold most of their crops to brokers before they plant) but on Walmart.

Perhaps the image that comes into Nate’s mind when he thinks of a small town is what might be considered a boutique community — close enough to an urban area to have access to the amenities and comforts of life, but isolated from urban problems — and not towns like Pahokee, Florida or Porcupine, South Dakota.

I just moved back to my hometown, though my family no longer lives here. I was living in the capitol city nearby, so no need for my husband to change jobs, etc. I knew I’d like being back here, but it turns out I LOVE it. It’s amazing what a difference size makes. My husband thought I’d be driving back to the city a lot, but I don’t. The kids and I can get most of our needs met right here. I think I actually drive less because even an event that is “across town” is closer than a similar activity was in the city!

But he is made rootless by the culture, and the crowning stroke is that he blames himself for this.

The fake culture makes it so cities are glamorous, that knowledge work is vital and physical work can be outsourced, and that educated, intelligent people are to always leave their homes at the dictates of their career, and can only return once they have spent many long years making a name. The culture says it is better to have a glamorous career than having family or stability, and to have varied sex rather than a wife or husband.

“I think the problem is that it’s not enough for just one person, or a few, to go back to their small towns. It’s not the same unless a lot of people do it.”

If everyone’s to blame then no one is. If staying in your hometown is instrinsically morally superior to leaving, then you should stay. If, however, you merely prefer the way of life that would obtain if everyone else stayed along with you, well, that’s not happening and there’s no point in rending your garments.

The only way I can see staying as morally superior to leaving is because you stay close to and take care of your family. But there’s no guarantee that your family will stay either.

Certainly, small-town, rooted, traditional values America is in decline. But there’s another America which is on the rise. The cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, urbanized and suburbanized, well-traveled, non-traditional values America is on the rise.

to Don Quijote who wrote Name one industrialized or industrializing country in which the population is not concentrating or has not concentrated in a handful of large metropolitan areas Germany where there are only four cities with a population of more than 1 million (Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Cologne) 10 more with populations over 500,000 and a mass of 63 small cities with populations between 100,000 and 500,000.

as Mr Lind would tell us ( a shameless plug for his excellent offshoot of this site) Germany has efficient and ecnomic public transport connecting the cities.

I’ll give you a second country:France, where there is only one city with a population of more than 1 million Paris and it too has a cluster of smaller more people friendly cities. France has the TGV

One need not apportion “blame” at any point. I submit that a simple cause-and-effect view is sufficient.

The “small town” model still exists. What has changed and is changing is the sustainability of that model due to a variety of factors, chief amongst them is the increase in personal mobility (and, I opine, the increase in the need for it).

Physical proximity, as Naturalmom illustrates very well, is the controlling factor. Your FB “friend” on another continent is not going to arrive tomorrow to take care of your cat while you leave for an unexpected business trip. If you are like most people in urban settings, you are not likely to even know the names of most of your neighbors, let alone have a level of trust in them to be in your home during your absence. Longevity supports acquaintance and leads to trust (or good reasons to withhold it), and only physical interaction can provide the direct support in building that acquaintancship.

My “small town” was a densely populated suburb bordering on a major urban center. Our neighborhoods consisted of neighbors, friends, classmates in the public schools and team mates in sports at public playgrounds or in the local versions of leagues (we had Little League baseball). Our babysitter walked to our house and home aftewards. A child in distress could knock on any door and be taken care of. It didn’t matter if we were members of that church, it invited and welcomed us to its social events. I could go on (and on).

Urbanites have a much lighter ecological footprint, having smaller dwellings and using public transport. And it’s startlingly easy to make friends and build community here – especially once you have kids and meet other parents at parks and playspaces. Of course, then apparently you become “SWPLs” and your communities and families don’t count anymore.

My comments:
1. My little California hometown is Mexican now. It would have become so whether or not I stayed. Labor-intensive agriculture is the main industry. Of course the schools are shot. A bigger part of the decline is the importation of people with non-civilized values.
2. And really, hasn’t America always been about rootlessness? Who were the pilgrims? The explorers, mountainmen, 49ers, etc? Again, the problem isn’t rootlessness per se, it’s the quality and values of the people we have now.

The city of Lyon has 483,181 inhabitants.[1] Together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Lyon forms the largest conurbation in France outside Paris with a population estimated to be 1,422,331; its overall metropolitan area was estimated to have a population of 2,118,132.[2][3] Its urban region represents half of the Rhône-Alpes region population with 2.9 million inhabitants.[4] Lyon is the capital of this region, as well as the capital of the smaller Rhône département.

So let’s see, the three largest Metro Area have a combined population of over 15 Million, oops that a quarter of France’s population lives in three Metro areas…

Want to tell me that country of small towns is?

BTW I was born in some lost village in the Cote Du Nord, and I can tell you that the only people left in the village I was born in are the three or four local farmers who took over all the profitable farm land and bunch of Englishmen who have bought old farms as country homes and a bunch of old farts who are moving back to the old country to retire and die…

My suspicion is that major cities/urban areas can encompass multiple communes, so the list of communes doesn’t tell you how large the cities are. (e.g. You’ll be led astray if you think the population of Staten Island means that NYC is a small city).

There are 118 communes on your source that are listed as being part of “Île-de-France”, let me fill you in on a little secret “Île-de-France” is a polite way of saying Suburb of Paris.

The Paris aire urbaine expands at each population census due to the rapid population growth in the Paris area: new communes (municipalities) surrounding Paris become included in the aire urbaine when they meet the 40% commuter threshold required to be considered part of the aire urbaine. At the 1968 census, the earliest date for which population figures were retrospectively computed for French aire urbaines, the Paris aire urbaine had 9 872 000 inhabitants in an area that only encompassed central Île-de-France. At the 1999 census the Paris aire urbaine was by then slightly larger than Île-de-France and had 11,174,743 inhabitants. In 2008 its was 12,089,098 million according to INSEE.